Free and Clear
by Ratheri
Summary: Free and Clear is the story of Eli Teig, a tramp freighter captain think Han Solo, or Malcom Reynolds from Serenity and his ship, the Nal'sooth, which is Rodian for Free and Clear.


Eli bolted upright in his acceleration seat as the shrill beeping of the mass sensors jarred him from his nap. A split second later, he whacked his head on an overhanging console as the ship rocked from blaster fire. "Frack! What the… Arkay!"

The squat yellow and silver astromech droid rolled up to its master, fixed its main photoreceptor on him, and let out an inquisitive chirp. "Well, I was rather curious as to why we've apparently dropped out of hyperspace, and was kind of hoping you'd be able to tell me who the heck is shooting at us?" RK-X3 chirped away merrily as he approached the computer terminal in the ship's cockpit. "What? No, I don't think that it's the ghost pirates from the Karib system." Eli chided his mechanical compatriot. "Honestly, where in the world do you get these ideas? Everyone knows that there's no such thing as a Karibian pirate, let alone ghosts. Now quit fooling around and activate the tactical systems, will ya?"

A second shot rocked the ship, almost sending Eli sprawling over the main console. " Ooof! Arkay, while you're pulling up tactical, could you do me a favor and ask the autopilot to please NOT fly into each and every shot? Wait, better yet, just turn it off and switch controls to manual." Eli strapped himself in and pulled back on the flight yoke just as a transparent hologram created from the ship's sensors was projected on the main cockpit window. The crimson trail of a blaster shot flashed through the space where the Nal'sooth would have been a moment before, and RK squealed his excitement. "Lucky move, that's all. The rear deflectors seem to be holding okay. Didn't seem to do a whole lot of damage when they hit. Probably, an old model autoblaster, and underpowered at that." RK chirped out in agreement. "Well, that rules out Imperials. Pirates maybe?" RK let loose with a series of chirps, beeps, and whistles in response. "No, I didn't say ghost pirates. And no more Holonet for you for a week if you keep bringing that up. Give me a close-up of section 43.2298… there, that's what's shooting at us. Frack, I haven't seen anything like that in years. It's an old Duros model. In fact, it looks like it's been sitting out here for years. That autoblaster's probably just part of an automated defense system." Eli looked over to RK. "What do you say buddy? Up for a salvage operation?" The little droid whistled gleefully and began to make preparations.

- -

The sound of the heavy magnetic clamps rang out throughout the Nal'sooth as the ship docked with the old derelict. Eli climbed down the docking tube to the airlock of the other ship. Tentatively, he tried the controls to no success. "RK, docking airlock's no good. Lower me down the plasma torch, will ya?" A few minutes later, the hatch was open, and Eli was crawling into the darkness of the other ship, the only light other than the one on his EV suit being the low red emergency lights, and the blinking of the few controls still working. Eli floated over to what looked like one of the engineering panels and after a few seconds was able to get artificial gravity, life support, and main lighting back up. Next he ventured into the main engineering section to assess the condition of the ship's engines. _Frack,_ he thought to himself, _no wonder we were pulled out of hyperspace. The hyperdrive on this thing not only shot, it's probably emitting a false mass shadow._ "Arkay, we can forget about taking this thing anywhere. Looks like the hyperdrive and the sublights aren't just shot, they're unstable. I'm gonna go check out the cargo bay, see if we can at least get some credits for whatever they had in their holds.

As Eli began to work his way from engineering to the cargo hold, something began to bother him. The ship wasn't just old; it looked like it had been sitting there for as long as he'd been alive, maybe longer. The interior reminded him of the designs he'd seen in old holovids of ships from the Old Republic. He considered going up to the bridge to check out the ship's logs to find out what exactly happened here, but he managed to convince himself that he was better off not knowing. _Remember, Eli, you've managed to keep out from under both the Hutts and the Imperials by minding your own business. No need to go changing that now._ "_Nal'sooth" means "Free and clear", and you want to stay that way. Don't forget that._

The cargo hold wasn't nearly as large as what Eli had expected for a ship this size, and looked more like a medical bay than anything else. He switched on the nearest console and realized as it came to full power that what he was staring at wasn't bacta tanks, but cryo stasis tubes… and one of them was occupied!


End file.
